MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. Oleg Postnikov, deputy director of the department for nonproliferation and control of weapons at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday said the Pentagon offers little transparency about its military biological activities.
"The issues of ensuring biosecurity gain increasingly more urgency," he said during a discussion at the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. "Taking advantage of the fact that the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention doesn’t have a verification mechanism, the Pentagon conducts large-scale military biological activities, and the US military is extremely untransparent about it."
"Apparently, they have something to hide," he went on to say.
The diplomat said Russia engages closely with the former Soviet republics in these matters.
"We discuss biosecurity issues in the CIS, CSTO and in bilateral contacts and move on with our partners to sign intergovernmental memorandums of understanding on biosecurity issues," he said. "These documents have already been signed with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Uzbekistan."
Talks are ongoing with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Postnikov said.